Framing Earthquakes in the News: A Systematic Review of Three Decades of Research (1995-2025)
This systematic review of 100 studies from 1995 to 2025 reveals that while earthquake news framing research has surged recently, it remains methodologically dominated by qualitative newspaper analyses and superficially applies framing theory as a disciplinary marker rather than a deep analytical tool, highlighting critical gaps in geographic diversity, ethical framing, and visual-textual integration.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
When the ground shakes, the story that follows is just as powerful as the tremor itself. News outlets do not simply report facts about an earthquake; they choose which details to highlight, which voices to amplify, and which angles to show. This process of selection and emphasis is known as framing. Think of a frame as a window: the glass is clear, but the frame decides what you see and what you leave out. In the case of a disaster, a frame might focus on the raw power of nature, the failure of human engineering, or the bravery of survivors. Over the last thirty years, scholars have studied how these frames shape our understanding of earthquakes, yet no one had ever gathered all that research into a single, clear picture until now.
A team of researchers from the National University of Malaysia decided to change that. They set out to review every major academic study on earthquake news coverage published between 1995 and 2025. Their goal was to understand how the field has evolved, what stories are being told, and what is missing from the conversation. By analyzing one hundred peer-reviewed studies, they uncovered a field that is growing rapidly but still relies heavily on old habits, particularly when it comes to looking at pictures versus words.
The researchers began by casting a wide net, searching through five major academic databases for any study that looked at how news media covers earthquakes. They filtered out anything that was not a primary research study, leaving them with a final collection of one hundred papers. They then created a detailed system to code every study, looking at eight different aspects, such as the year it was published, the country where the earthquake happened, the type of media analyzed, and the specific theories the authors used. Two trained researchers coded the data independently to ensure accuracy, and their agreement was exceptionally high, confirming that the findings were reliable.
The first thing the team noticed was a massive surge in interest. For the first two decades, the number of studies was small and steady. However, starting in 2020, the output exploded. Nearly half of all the studies in their collection were published between 2020 and 2025. This spike was driven largely by the devastating 2023 earthquake in Turkey and Syria, which alone inspired thirteen separate studies. The researchers found that scholars tend to focus on the most visible, high-casualty events, often ignoring earthquakes in other seismically active regions that receive less international attention. For instance, while Chile and New Zealand experience frequent major quakes, they appear in very few of the studies compared to events in Turkey, China, or Nepal.
When the researchers looked at what these studies were actually saying, they found a clear pattern in how earthquakes are framed. Almost half of the studies analyzed multiple frames at once, recognizing that a single news report often mixes different stories, such as a disaster report combined with a human interest story. The most common frame was simply describing the disaster itself—the magnitude, the damage, and the immediate emergency. However, the researchers were surprised to find that stories focusing on who was responsible for the damage, or the ethical treatment of victims, were extremely rare. Only a tiny fraction of the studies examined how news outlets assign blame to governments or corporations, or how they discuss the moral implications of who suffers most.
Another striking finding concerned the tools researchers used to analyze the news. For decades, the field has been dominated by text. The vast majority of studies looked only at the words in newspaper articles or online posts. While the news itself has become increasingly visual, filled with photographs, videos, and graphics, the academic analysis has not kept pace. Only two percent of the studies in the collection analyzed text and images together as a single unit. Most studies either ignored the pictures entirely or looked at them separately. This is a significant gap, because research shows that people remember images more easily than words, and the way a photo is framed can deeply influence how an audience feels about a disaster.
The study also revealed that the way researchers approach these questions is changing. There is a growing trend toward using mixed methods, where scholars combine different techniques, such as counting words and analyzing images, to get a fuller picture. The researchers found that studies using these mixed methods were much more likely to identify multiple frames in the news. Furthermore, as research has moved from traditional newspapers to digital platforms and social media, the complexity of the analysis has increased. Digital news is often a mix of text, video, and user comments, requiring researchers to look at a wider range of content than before.
Despite the growth in the number of studies, the theoretical foundation of the field has remained surprisingly static. Every single study in the collection cited "framing theory," but the researchers found that this citation often served as a standard label rather than a deep guide for the analysis. The studies did not show a significant increase in theoretical depth over the thirty-year period. They also noted a disconnect between the study of news frames and the study of how people actually react to disasters. Theories that explain how organizations manage crises or how people decide to take safety actions were almost entirely absent from the research, leaving a gap in understanding how these news stories translate into real-world behavior.
The authors conclude that while the field of earthquake news research is vibrant and expanding, it needs to evolve to match the modern media landscape. They suggest that future research must move beyond just reading words to truly analyzing images and videos. They also call for more studies that look at who is being blamed for disasters and how vulnerable populations are portrayed. Finally, they urge scholars to look beyond English-language sources to include research from countries that face the highest risks but are often overlooked in global academic discussions. By addressing these gaps, the next generation of research can provide a more complete and accurate picture of how the world understands and responds to the shaking earth.
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